


salt and brine

by ictus



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Hallucinations, M/M, Manipulation, Munchausen by proxy, Post-Canon, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-12 22:53:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20572268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/pseuds/ictus
Summary: Will is haunted by the idea of drowning at sea. Luckily, Hannibal’s there to help.





	salt and brine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Collateral Damage](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20162854) by [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier). 
  * In response to a prompt by [asuralucier](https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier) in the [2019remixrevivalmadness](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/2019remixrevivalmadness) collection. 

> Set post-S3. Thank you to bookwormtiff for the speedy beta!

i.

When Will was a child, his parents took him to the sea.

It was their yearly tradition. Will didn’t care for the sun or the sand, but he did take a special interest in the seashells. Each year he collected armfuls of them; meticulously curated, categorised by size, shape and colour. Will would stand on the shores of the Atlantic and catalogue them all, filling a black leather notebook as carefully as a hunter loads a rifle.

His favourite were the conch shells. Will would close his eyes and hold them to his ear, and listen to the echo of the ocean, to the sound of the swell. Even when he was back home, miles away from the Atlantic, he would carry the sound of the ocean wherever he went.

Will hears that sound now. The familiar roll of the waves, the muffled silence of being submerged underwater. The darkness surrounds him, pressed against his eyelids like a blindfold, and when he draws a breath that doesn’t come he thinks, _this is it—this is how I’ll die._

As soon as the thought occurs to him, he hears a voice.

“Will.”

Will turns his head towards the sound but it’s like fighting against the tide. The voice is muted, as if there’s an entire ocean separating them, distorted beyond recognition.

“Will.”

It’s coming closer.

Will opens his mouth to reply but he has no breath, and as his chest heaves and his lungs burn he realises,_ this is what it feels like to drown_. The ocean rages and rages until suddenly, the voice is much closer, cutting through the white noise with a startling clarity.

“Will, wake up.”

ii.

“The nightmares are getting worse,” Hannibal says.

Hannibal sits opposite the bed, his legs crossed gracefully at the knee. He’s wearing a suit despite the sweltering heat, although he’s abandoned the waistcoat and has undone his shirt to the second button, baring the alluring line of his throat. He looks impossibly put together while Will retches into a mixing bowl, the shock of the nightmare turning his stomach.

Will wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, tastes bile bitter on his tongue. “Yeah,” he replies, although it wasn’t a question. Hannibal regards him with something like curiosity, and Will’s forcibly reminded of sitting in a psychiatrist’s office half a dozen states away and being subject to that same scrutiny, that clinical detachment.

“It’s still the ocean?”

Will closes his eyes and hears the roar of the waves echo in his ears. His mouth is dry, and when he licks his lips he tastes salt.

“Yeah,” Will says, not opening his eyes. “It’s still the ocean.”

iii.

When Will was in ninth grade, his chemistry teacher explained that the properties of a particular molecule can differ significantly from those of their constituent elements.

“For example, the element sodium,” she said, scrawling the letters _Na_ on the chalkboard, “is a highly reactive metal that combusts when immersed in water. While chlorine”—she added the letters _Cl_—“is a deadly gas that’s been used in chemical warfare. But put them together”—she drew a link between the two elements—“and you end up with a white crystalline compound that you can sprinkle on your fries.”

When Will was living in Wolf Trap, he visited Hannibal for dinner.

“The salt crust,” Hannibal explained, “is an excellent technique, particularly for cooking fish. It combines the elements of steaming and baking to trap moisture, resulting in tender, succulent flesh.”

Will thought there was something unnerving about the way Hannibal said the word _flesh_. He took a sip of wine and swallowed down his discomfort.

“It’s important to be gentle so you don’t bruise the flesh”—Will shivered—“yet you must press firmly enough so the fish is completely sealed.” Will watched Hannibal cover the trout with the salt mix, then carefully mould it around the fish. Hannibal had removed his jacket and was down to his waistcoat and dress shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Something about this made him look more—more human, somehow. Will stared at his bare wrists, at the tiny veins that ran there, and bit the inside of his cheek.

“I never did thank you, by the way,” Hannibal said suddenly.

Will raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“For the fish,” Hannibal clarified. “It’s always much more satisfying to eat something that you’ve caught yourself. Don’t you think?”

iv.

These days, Will wakes to Hannibal’s touch more often than not.

A damp washcloth on his forehead, cool fingers on his face. “Will,” Hannibal murmurs softly. “You need to take your medicine.”

Will makes a discontented sound. Hannibal’s presence feels suffocating, too much and too close and too _wrong_. “Please,” Will says, the word tearing from his parched throat. “It makes me feel even worse.”

“The aspirin should help with the headaches, and I’m giving you some nabilone for the nausea.”

Will blinks his eyes into focus, his gaze falling on two innocuous-looking white pills alongside the little blue ones he usually takes. Sighing, he pulls himself into a sitting position and takes the pills from Hannibal’s outstretched palm.

“The medication you’re taking for the nightmares has side-effects that should subside over time. At the moment, we only need to work on managing them.”

“By taking more drugs?” Will asks wryly, and tosses the pills back. He takes the glass of water Hannibal offers him, and when he drinks it tastes like brine, the salt of it coating his throat and sticking to his tongue. 

v.

It had been Hannibal’s idea to stop in this town.

“It’s only temporary,” Hannibal assured him as they pulled up to the house—a small villa that overlooked the ocean, the inescapable vastness of the sea visible through every window. “As it’s summer, the town will be full of tourists. We can lie low for a while.”

Will breathed in the sea air and felt an answering wave of nausea. “How long?”

Hannibal paused. “A while,” he said, and locked the door behind him.

vi.

Will was once told that the average person can hold their breath underwater for up to one minute before the carbon dioxide accumulation becomes so severe, they can’t help but take an involuntary breath. After that, aspirated fluid invokes a muscle spasm of the airway, forcing the trachea closed. The subsequent oxygen deprivation can lead to fatal injury within minutes.

Will submerges himself in the bathtub and counts backwards from sixty, pushing his limits, training himself to ignore all of his instincts that are screaming for air. Will tries and tries_, _but he never does make it to zero.

vii.

One morning, Will wakes to the smell of fresh basil.

The light is starting to filter through their bedroom window which means it must be past noon, although he can’t remember what day it is. He can’t remember a lot of things.

Will’s T-shirt hangs loosely off his shoulders and smells slightly sour, like stale sweat. _Fever dreams_, he thinks as he pulls on a new shirt, then follows the smell of fresh herbs down the hall.

Will finds Hannibal in the kitchen, his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows as he grinds basil with a mortar and pestle. Will hovers in the doorway and watches the taut pull of his muscles as he mashes the leaves into a fine paste.

“Will,” Hannibal says when he notices him. “You’re up.” He sounds surprised, but not pleased.

“I am,” Will forces out with difficulty. He’s parched, his mouth dry as a salt flat. Hannibal seems oblivious to his discomfort.

“I’m making pesto,” Hannibal says, picking up the pestle again, the displeasure in his tone gone so quickly, Will’s certain he must have imagined it. “Traditional _pesto alla Genovese_ calls for Parmigiano Reggiano, but I’m afraid I couldn’t find any here.”

As Hannibal talks, Will lets his eyes fall back to the mortar and pestle to see it’s full of—not herbs, but hundreds of tiny blue pills, all crushed under Hannibal’s relentless pressure. The mortar and pestle is no longer black granite, but white ceramic, like those used by pharmacists.

“Will? Is everything okay?”

Will startles. His heart is pounding, bursting out of his chest. Disoriented, he feels for a nearby chair and collapses onto it, unable to take his eyes off the bowl.

“I think the hallucinations have started again,” Will hears himself say.

Hannibal pauses, then sets the pestle down very deliberately. An uneasy silence falls over the room, and Will already knows what Hannibal will say next.

“We need to increase your dosage.”

viii.

Will had once read that Utah’s Great Salt Lake contains up to ten times as much salt as any ocean. The high salt density creates a buoyancy that’s higher than normal so swimming feels like floating, a weightless drifting that’s unlike anything else on earth.

When Will sleeps that night he dreams not of the ocean, but of the Great Salt Lake. But he doesn’t dream of floating. He dreams of all the water evaporated, the basin emptied, until only the salt remains. Will dreams of mountains and mountains of it, towering skyward as far as the eye can see, and drifting down from the sky like snow. It falls softly at first—_it’s important to be gentle so you don’t bruise the flesh_—but then harder, pelting him from above. The mountains crumble, rocks of salt tumbling like an avalanche, until it’s burying him, covering his eyes and filling his throat.

Will screams himself awake, choking on a lungful of salt that exists only in his mind. Hannibal’s hands are on him instantly, his touch soothing as he rubs circles into Will’s back.

“Just breathe,” Hannibal murmurs. Will shudders and shakes, his chest heaving as his breath hitches, not quite able to swallow down the sob that rises in his throat. 

When the bed dips and Hannibal’s touch abruptly disappears, Will already knows he’ll be returning with more pills.

ix.

Will wakes late, the bedroom already awash with the afternoon sun. Hannibal’s sitting by his bedside in a tartan three-piece suit, looking exactly as he did the day they met.

Will rises on shaky legs and crosses the room, easing himself down onto the window seat next to Hannibal.

“Are you feeling better?” Hannibal asks.

Will pauses. Now that he thinks of it, he doesn’t feel like anything.

“You don’t look well,” Hannibal says mildly, but he’s not looking at Will. Will follows his gaze to the bed where he sees—impossibly—himself.

His body is stretched out on the bed, covered in sweat, the sheets twisted as he tosses and turns. His eyelids are fluttering rapidly, his expression pained and brow furrowed. From the window, Will watches on with rapt fascination, unable to tear his eyes away.

“So this is what they mean when they talk about an out-of-body experience,” Will says absently.

Hannibal stares at him for a long moment, then turns his gaze back to the bed. “Yes,” he says slowly. “Yes I suppose this is what it must feel like.”

“I’m dreaming,” Will says.

“Or hallucinating,” Hannibal agrees.

They sit in silence as Will dozes fitfully on the bed, muttering under his breath and occasionally stirring. When he does, his eyes are fever-bright, glassy and unseeing, completely incognizant.

Finally, Will turns to Hannibal. “Are you doing this to me?” he asks quietly.

Hannibal meets his gaze without flinching. “Sometimes, when we encounter a truth that’s irreconcilable with our perception of the world, we bury it deep in our psyche, and it manifests in other ways.” Hannibal leans in close, his lips brushing Will’s ear. “If you have to ask, then perhaps you already know.”

Will clenches his jaw. “I’ll leave you,” he says through gritted teeth.

They both turn back to the Will on the bed who’s begun to convulse, gasping and spluttering as he struggles to breathe. When the coughing finally subsides, Hannibal’s the first to break the silence.

“Can you?” he asks softly.

x.

Hannibal says, “You need to take your medicine.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can also find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/scansionictus).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Podfic: 'Salt and Brine' by ictus](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25728451) by [peasina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peasina/pseuds/peasina)


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